


we make all of our suns the same,

by anakinleias



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, F/M, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Red Room (Marvel), Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-02-01 07:03:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12699816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anakinleias/pseuds/anakinleias
Summary: “He's been tracking her for a while now, always a step behind while she remains just out of his reach. Natalia’s not the best for nothing, her penchant for leaving no trace being a pain in his ass. Quite like her arachnid namesake, she could find a hole and simply disappear.”Clint is sent to kill Natasha, and this is how it goes.





	we make all of our suns the same,

**Author's Note:**

> AU where soulmates' first words to each other are tattooed on their skin.
> 
> I'm truly sorry about this. As usual, all mistakes are mine and huge thanks to the usual suspects.

 

Clint’s soulmark has been a mystery to him his whole life. A series of strange symbols he could never comprehend, and over the years gave up on. Barney used to tease him about it, saying he drew it on himself because he was born without a mark and just didn’t want to admit it.

Of course his soulmark didn't make sense.

 _Who the fuck would want you anyway?,_ his father used to scream in his face between punches, fists pounding mercilessly until he blacked out, but not before he caught a glimpse of the last words their mother said, scrawled on the inside of his elbow.

-

Yelena stands behind her, pulling on the collar of her shirt and exposing her protruding vertebrae; Natalia gathers her hair in one hand, the other clenched into a fist at her side, her body rigid. She’d seen Yelena fighting Svetlana this morning; Yelena was ruthless, her blows strong and delivered with a precision that belied her nine years of age. Yelena had a growth spurt recently, the daily injections from Madame finally achieving their goal. She was taller already, her lanky frame towering over Natalia’s own. However, Natalia also knew to study her every action, learn the way her mind worked and to predict her next movement. It was not something that was beat into them for nothing.

Natalia remains motionless while Yelena reads the mark. Heart pounding in her chest as the other girl utters the words back to her; she closes her eyes in resignation.

“ _Goodbye, spider._ ”

It won’t be the cold nights endured with only ratty clothes and a single blanket as she lays chained to her bed, it won’t be the days without eating as punishment for making mistakes, nor the brutal training that will kill her. The universe had decided her fate long before the flames engulfed her home and her мамочка screamed her name as she burned.

 

-

The doctor handling his physical at SHIELD pulls him aside when he comes in to sign the paperwork that will allow them to enter his medical information into his file at their database, muttering three words that make his stomach turn.

“About your mark–”

Clint scratches the back of his neck, uncomfortably shifting his weight from foot to foot, “Look, doc, I know it’s your job to have all this stuff but I don’t know who they are. I don’t even know what it means, so–”

“I’m sorry, agent. I thought you knew, and by regulations I had to ask.”

The doctor clutches the clipboard to his chest, looking stricken. Looking down, he rips up a piece of paper from the bottom of the forms, motioning for Clint to roll up his sleeve, exposing the symbols neatly scribbled across the skin of his bicep. “I can’t really help you, other than saying those aren’t symbols but Cyrillic letters,” he copies them down into the slip of paper before handing it to Clint. “You might want to ask someone up at communications to translate this for you, though.”

 

Communications is bursting with activity. An entire side of the room is full of agents sitting in front of desktops, headphones in their ears and fingers flying over their keyboards as they work on transcripts for the various ops currently ongoing.

Clint walks over to the coffee machine, having spotted an agent that looks to be taking a break and pouring an obscene amount of sugar into his mug.

“Hey, you got a minute?”

“Make it fast, we’re kind of rushed here today,” the man turns, stirring his coffee and blowing on the top, raising his brows with a bit of impatience already showing. “What do you need?”

“They told me to come here to get a translation for this,” Clint hands over the scrap of paper. “All I know is that it’s Russian.”

The agent unfolds the paper, reads it over, and promptly starts laughing. Clint grits his teeth, the man already getting on his nerves. Wasn’t he in a rush? Relaxing his face back into a neutral expression, he releases a sigh. “So?”

Sobering up, the agent hands him back the note. “It just says _Thank you_. Sorry they made you come all the way down here for this. Man, being the rookie really sucks, huh? Next time just attach a picture to an email or something.”

“How do you pronounce it?”

 

-

Graduation finally arrives.

After a decade of preparation and training, after the 52 little beds with chains became 28, after giving blood (so much blood, she felt like her hands would never be clean) and sweat – but no tears; they quickly learned there was no place or purpose for them – they are ready. Even with Madame's daily injections, the healing will take two days and the ceremony will take another three. There are more girls graduating this time than last year. A few of her classmates have graduated yesterday already, with a few more going today.

Natalia graduates tomorrow. She hasn't seen any of the other girls yet. She doubts she ever will.

With a sigh, she turns onto her side with a practiced ease so that the chain barely rattles as it slides over the bedframe. Bringing a hand up to her neck, she lets her thumb run over the words printed on her skin unknowingly for the last time, memorizing the letters into her fingerprints as her eyes close.

 

She's trying to be brave; the bed is cold under her back, the thin mattress feeling frozen stiff underneath her even stiffer frame. Her hands clutch the bars at the sides with a white-knuckled grip, eyes searching nervously around her, looking at the faces, instruments and tubes trying to recognize someone, _something_.

The back of her neck seems to burn hot and cold at the same time, her hands gripping the bars tighter to stop herself from reaching for it, from jumping away from this table and hiding underneath her bed.

They wheel her away and she startles, nerves getting the best of her. Nobody pays her any mind and for that, she’s grateful. The surgical lights above her make her squint, giving everyone and everything around her a blurry white halo. Feeling something prick at her arm, Natalia sees a shape setting up an IV to her left, turning her head to escape the glare. She spots Madame standing over her, ink-black hair hidden behind a cap identical to the one encasing Natalia’s fiery locks. Her face is severe as usual, eyes hard and mouth set on a firm line.

Someone is manipulating her IV again, syringe in hand. They nod, and Madame holds a mask over her face. The edges of her vision go fuzzy as darkness takes hold and she hears Madame’s whisper in her ear.

“Congratulations, Natalia.”

 

When she finally awakens, feeling groggy and with a sore throat, her insides feel as if they’ve been rearranged and her neck tingles. She brings a hand up to the site of her mark, finding a mound of bandages. _We took care of it for you;_ they tell her, smiles daring her to question or protest, _the scarring will be minimal and your hair should hide it well enough._

Two days later, after she’s finally able to stand on her feet without crying out, she removes the bandages and stares at herself in the mirror. Her eyes are bright and look sunken in, dark circles approaching her cheeks, telling the tales of sleepless nights muffling her pained cries in the pillow. There is a thin red line on her still-swollen lower abdomen, right above her pubic bone, the incision not at all different from a c-section. Natalia knows better, this was no baby. She will have no babies, not anymore.

Pulling her hair to the side, she uses the compact in the toiletry bag left on top of the sink for her and carefully removes the bandages. And promptly breaks down. Her pale flesh is a mess of reds and looks raw, the skin mottled and angry at the abuse it endured.

Her mark is gone.

 

-

He's been tracking her for a while now, always a step behind while she remains just out of his reach. Natalia’s not the best for nothing, her penchant for leaving no trace being a pain in his ass. Quite like her arachnid namesake, she could find a hole and simply disappear.

The very first time is in the Hoia Forest in Romania, the location alone giving him the creepy-crawlies as he reads the encrypted message. _Of course she’s in a fucking haunted forest._ Her target is a senator camping with his brothers for the weekend, men being as they are and doing dumb things under the influence. Clint uneasily sets up his hideout inside one of the hollow twisted out trees in a cluster that enables him to keep a vantage point while providing the perfect protection from the weather, if not from the insects of the area. His arms itch the entire time, often breaking his concentration. The atmosphere of the place didn’t help either, the very air making him nervous and twitchy.

After hitting the 5-hour mark watching the heavily intoxicated men yell around the campgrounds with her being a no-show, he has to abort the attempt, his arms swollen down to his fingertips and the skin of his bicep feeling raw, tiny insect bites dotting his skin and distorting the words of his mark.

As he packs up and calls it in, he misses her small smile as she watches him from her scope, high above the trees.

The second time was smoother, he’d had her in his sights and ready to take the shot when Coulson’s voice sounded over his comms, pulling him out and issuing new orders that took precedence due to his timely location. Her target was someone SHIELD also wanted eliminated, and the higher-ups were content to let her do her job and direct a local asset to more pressing matters.

He loses her after that, frustrated at how quickly her trail went cold. He’s tired, missing his dog – Lucky probably doesn’t even remember him anymore, with the amount of time he spends at Kate’s – and in desperate need of a New York pizza.

 

-

Clint catches up to her 4 months, 7 countries and 18 assassinations later; he’d called up a few favors with agents in two other countries for a lead on her again, and by this point their cat and mouse game has started to grate on him. He just wants to get this over with. She's currently on the roof of one of the buildings from the KBC hospital, setting up gear to infiltrate the complex. Clint checked into the Hotel Rebro some 12 hours ago, the location proximity along with the shops surrounding it providing perfect cover for his recon earlier that day. The stars are blanketing the sky, and he's been waiting long enough to watch the sun set over Zagreb. Her pace is unhurried, almost seeming to mock him for his inability to finish the job.

His bow is clean, the string waxed and tight, the arrow sharp. He aims, drawing back the string with a deep breath. Exhaling, he lets it loose and waits for impact.

Bullseye.

 

-

The shot is quick and painless at first, her gasp more of surprise at being hit than anything. Looking down at her chest, she can see the entry wound and an arrow protruding from it, the front of her uniform slick with blood. When the pain finally registers over the shock, she goes down.

She doesn’t try to get up, too tired to envision making a run for it or fighting her soon-to-be killer. Instead, she stays on the ground and tries to breathe through the pain. Natalia’s brain tries to assimilate her condition, accounting for her symptoms. She has a penetrating injury and her chest feels heavy, her breathing comes harder and faster and her heart rate is accelerated, all of which mean either a hemothorax or pneumothorax, maybe both. Slow and painful it is, then.

Her legs feel numb and her fingertips are tingling, her vision going fuzzy around the edges as her body fights to stay alive. Her heart is pumping blood faster, only for it to pool inside her chest cavity before leaking out and settling around her in a puddle, some of it coming up her throat in gurgles. The fact that she’s dying right above a hospital isn’t lost on her either.

 

-

He fires a grappling arrow and rappels down into the side of the building, pulling himself up over the ledge and scraping the inside of his arms in the process. Doesn’t come without its bumps and scrapes, but sleeves always feel like constriction in the field and he makes it a point to wear them only when necessary.

Clint folds his bow and stores it next to the quiver strapped to his back, Natalia’s body lying in a pool of blood as she chokes. He approaches carefully, reaching for his holster and taking the safety off his sidepiece but keeping it down. Bringing his wrist close to his mouth, he whispers over his comm. “Target down. Standby for confirmation.”

It feels wrong. It’s too easy. She’s not even trying to shoot him, and he’s memorized her file and seen enough footage to know this is out of character for the Black Widow. She must’ve seen this coming, which means she could’ve avoided him and actually turned the tables on their situation. He should be the one on the ground in a pool of his own blood, and yet. Unarmed, her riffle still disassembled in the bag. Almost as if she wanted this to happen.

 

-

He will stay until she’s gone, and tells himself he’s just doing his job, confirming a kill for his report. Making sure the world is rid of her. And self-preservation can’t have her going after him for this. Not because she looks incredibly young, and he’s seen her – presumed – date of birth on the files, so it shouldn’t surprise him. She is young. Younger than himself when he was following the path she’s currently on, but then again he’d been told all there is known about the Red Room, about little girls who kill.

She gurgles, and he sighs. Not much longer now.

“Goodbye, spider.”

Natalia's eyes flicker with recognition even as they cloud over from pain and the irony brings a smile to her bloodstained lips. Of course this is her soulmate. The person to love her above all else, beyond reason and ‘till death. He’s the one ending the connection, severing the link between them and unknowingly, setting her free. There’s a reason she’s only now at her end, and it isn’t for lack of trying. She’s very good at what she does, and her skills were the only reason she made it this far and for this long. Her chest constricts and she gasps, an undignified cough escaping her throat. She doesn’t know this stranger, this person the universe – from the strings of fate, written in the stars and whatever other platitudes people used to explain the concept – made just for her and her for him, and yet she can’t help but look at his face as she feels herself fading.

“Спасибо.” She manages to choke out in a murmur as the light in her eyes begins to dim, tilting her head back to look at the sky.

 

Clint swears at the stars.

 

“Coulson, we have a problem.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Peacekeeper by Fleetwood Mac, and was the inspiration for this.
> 
> Constructive criticism is appreciated, as are kudos and comments.


End file.
